It’s very easy for germs and bacteria to be spread from food or from dirty hands to areas where food is prepped. It’s not limited only to when food is prepped though, equipment, utensils and other things used to prepare food can also get contaminated very easily. With proper hygiene and a good cleaning plan, kitchens can avoid cross-contamination. Following are a few tips that you can follow to keep cross-contamination to an absolute minimum.

Enforce a personal hygiene cleaning program – to reduce the amount of cross-contamination that happens inside a kitchen, personal cleaning policies need to be enforced. These policies can involve proper hand wash and the correct use of gloves. Other aspects of personal hygiene also need to be discussed. for example, wearing hair nets, clean clothes, and certain types of jewelry which is not allowed. The final aspect of personal health has to do with making sure that when someone is sick they do not come to work and spread germs.

Use color-coded chopping boards – by using color-coded chopping boards you are going to greatly reduce the amount of cross-contamination that can take place inside a hotel kitchen. Most of the time cross-contamination happens when a chopping board that has been used to cut raw poultry gets used to cut salad. This leads to direct cross-contamination and has very serious consequences. Also, make sure to prepare foods far away from each other if they are different kinds. For example, you must not prep raw poultry next to the salad ingredients.

Keep floors as germ-free as possible at all times – the floor carries an abundance of germs and bacteria. Often people drop things on the floor and end up putting them back on the table without conscious thought to wiping them down and disinfecting them. Regular cleaning practices such as cotton mops and buckets do not actually remove germs. New and better technologies need to be used such as microfiber technology. Microfiber mops are able to remove germs with the added bonus of not having to use chemicals in order to get the job done. This is going to improve the air quality of the restaurant kitchen and at the same time improve the safety. See options about sizes and types.

The last way that restaurants can reduce cross-contamination is to purchase pre-prepped food. By doing this the restaurant owner will be reducing food handling by reducing the amount of cross-contamination that can take place.